Months after Katrina

FEMA 16

December 28, 2006|From the Orlando Sentinel

ANOTHER OPINION Everyone remembers when President Bush embraced fantasy over reality by praising incompetent FEMA Director Michael Brown for doing a "heck of a job" shortly after Hurricane Katrina hit the Gulf Coast. But who could have imagined that in the 16 months since then, the administration and other government half-doers would be doing little better than "Brownie" in helping the region recover? Nearly 100,000 people still live in mobile homes issued by the Federal Emergency Management Agency. FEMA has paid out just a fraction of the nearly $1 billion it promised local governments for rebuilding projects in New Orleans. Storm-wrecked neighborhoods along Mississippi's coast await recovery efforts. And thousands of people evacuated to Texas wrongly got their short-term housing assistance aid cut off last summer without any explanation, according to a court ruling demanding that FEMA get it right. Maddeningly slow bureaucratic approval processes, meanwhile, ground down the issuing of grants and loans needed to repair schools, small businesses and sewers. So inadequate, in fact, are reconstruction efforts that the administration now is considering returning some public housing residents to storm-ravaged units. Pathetic. For many, this administration's legacy is being painted by its bungled handling of the war in Iraq. But another coat's surely being applied by its mismanagement of Katrina. Government's not just about undertaking colossal projects; it's about, as the president himself might say, "getting the job done right."